SCO Looks For Intellectual-Property Claim On Linux

By Antone Gonsalves

Software maker SCO Group, which owns the legal rights to the original development of Unix, has hired former Microsoft prosecutor David Boies to investigate whether Linux users are infringing on the company's intellectual property.

SCO, formerly Caldera International Inc., hired Boies to investigate whether any Unix or Linux users need to buy an SCO license for the operating systems. Boies worked on the Justice Department's antitrust case against Microsoft, and defended music-sharing site Napster against the record industry. Boies also worked for former presidential candidate Al Gore in his Florida election litigation against President Bush.

SCO also said Wednesday that it had created a new business division, called SCOsource, to manage the licensing of its Unix intellectual property. SCO sells a proprietary version of Unix and provides a free version of Linux. Through a series of corporate buyouts over the last decade, SCO owns the original development done on Unix by Bell Labs. The work date backs to the 1970s.

In a statement, Darl McBride, SCO president and chief executive, made clear the company's intention.

"SCO owns much of the core Unix intellectual property, and has full rights to license this technology and enforce the associated patents and copyrights," McBride said. "SCO is frequently approached by software and hardware vendors and customers who want to gain access to key pieces of Unix technology."

In announcing the hiring of Boies, SCO also said it was offering to license SCO's Unix system shared libraries for use with Unix applications to enable them to run on Linux. In the past, customers could only buy the entire SCO operating system.

"The most substantial intellectual property in Unix comes from SCO," Chris Sontag, senior vice president for SCOsource, said in a statement. "While Linux is an open-source product, it shares philosophy, architecture, and APIs with Unix. SCO will help customers legitimately combine Linux and Unix technology to run thousands of Unix applications."

As open-source software, volunteers have developed Linux over the years. Most Linux users have assumed the operating system, built by a team of developers headed by Linus Torvalds, did not involve proprietary technology from Bell Labs.